


Thinking With Your Eyes Closed

by ArmieJude



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gay, M/M, Panic Attacks, Runaway, Strangers, Zoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 10:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14830178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArmieJude/pseuds/ArmieJude
Summary: It's been an hour since Teddy left the house, and he's already lost what inch of stability he's managed to cultivate. Too hot... to think. Too hot.





	Thinking With Your Eyes Closed

**Author's Note:**

> A small ficlet for @TinyJellyStars on Twitter. Follow me at @ArmieJude if you have any writing requests, I'm very in need of motivation.

The noonday sun coils in his hair, wet and sticky in his lashes no matter how many times his free hand dared to brush them away; summer continued to wrap itself up in knots, growing more and more tepid, more and more hot. Teddy could smell his skin roasting against the paved stones, barefoot. Surely he’d melt, or, maybe he wishes he could. 

A gaggle of children crowded about a foot away from his respite on a wooden bench, and, like their neon orange t-shirts to their backs, they clung against the protective railing, desperate to look into the pit below. He’d tried to warn them that, of course the tigers weren’t going to be out in this weather, nothing with fur would want to stray from the shade-- hell, he didn’t either. They didn’t listen. 

Nobody listened. 

Armitage stormed off to one room, and Father to another, their ears clogged with whatever insult they gleaned from the exchange. No use trying to call them together, there’s no use mending what you yourself didn’t break. His fingers knit together at that thought, forgetting what small sketches he’d managed in favor of easing his nervous habits. It’s too quiet there, or too loud; better to get out somewhere. Library’s too far on a bike, park too empty. A mile bike ride to the zoo with a ten pound bookbag took effort, time, sweat lost, but he’ll live. He did crosscountry that one year, he’ll live. 

Okay, maybe he’s dying now, but he made it here. That’s a… that’s a start. 

The group clusters around one another, children curled around familiars, chattering about this and that; alone, it seems, but not afraid of being adult-less. It was safe here, or maybe, it just feels safer as a kid? Innocence as insulation padded you from scary things just outside your vision. The world could be dissolving and it’d be okay, it’s okay. Nothing can hurt you when you don’t know what’s trying to. 

What happens to you if you did know? Is that what it means not to be a kid anymore? Maybe. 

Had he ever been a kid, then?

Everything always hurt, like little scrapes, falling over head over handlebars onto the asphalt, only to start again. Always tumbling into resentment, into an argument that wasn’t his to begin or his to end, into potential companionship lost to his own inability to explain where his strange, mottled behaviors stemmed from. Where had the softness been then? 

Sweat clouds his brow, the back of his neck, now spilling from his eyes, everywhere around his knuckles covered in drops. Hot… It’s so hot. Too hot to stay, too hot to go home. But Teddy can’t get up, his feet have rooted themselves to the spot, blinded by shimmering reverie, wet and slimy as it ran down his exposed throat. This is a public place, there’s no time for this. No time to sulk. No time. For anything. No time at all. His body and his mind never truly respected each other, though, never acted as halves. Instead, he sits. Sits and sits and sits. Hurting there, unprotected by gentleness, or self-preservation, nothing-

Heavy. On his head. Heavy. Too heavy.

“Um, hey, dude. You, uh… you okay?” A strange rough voice claws at his ears, breaking the low drone of a crowd he’d managed to tune out a while ago. Where? He swerves his head left and right, vision blurry, unsure of where he is, what’s really happening. On… on his head? On his head. The weight subsides, overstimulation vanishing as his neck lays back, catching the stranger halfway between upside-down and right-side-up in his gaze.

The growl suited the face, definitely. A shock of curly blonde hair, dyed badly, half-broken glasses, too big of a nose for a face that round. ‘Not quite right’, his art brain murmurs insistently, ‘All of the pieces don’t fit together right. Too many features against each other.’ It’s right, he’s right. Like a cartoon character. Teddy squints, in an attempt to make him out better, before, finally, the question sinks in. As does the blood to his head. 

Words, words, please. Please, words, please. “H… hot. It’s… hot…” Those are… some words. In the right order. Not the right ones, but, he’s not really sure there are the right ones for whatever’s infecting his thoughts this instant. Blonde Hair blinks back, before nodding his head in agreement, reaching behind his back to get something. Probably plastic, by the sound of it. Is this… a joke or something?

“Yeah dude, it’s nasty out. Kid passed out here the other day, you gotta, uh,” Plastic continues to crinkle behind him at an unbearable volume until, finally, a half-finished water bottle appears from his pocket and into his hands. “Drink up. Sorry, I had half of it. I’m not, uh. I don’t have any cooties or anything.”

What? “What?”

Blonde hair and glasses bob in awkwardness, hand on his sleeve as his voice somehow gets more strange and hoarse. “Like, cooties, yknow? When you were a kid and people thought you had some kinda… illness-y thing. Sort of… y’know?” Two big hands fiddle with his backpack, the tiger-striped hat (with matching ears attached, surreally enough) almost too much to look at. He’s… so much. This man. Like looking in the Sun and having it talk back to you about… nonsense. 

Unable to talk, he turns to the water, his nose still running as he gulps down whatever’s left over, slightly lukewarm but so cold on his hot skin when it drips onto his collar. An errant thought wishes he could absorb it into his body, like an especially dry frog, roasting on the sidewalk. “Good…” He burbles, siphoning the last few drops from the transparent bottom of the bottle before leaning back backwards to confront him, finally, the lingering, overly-tall ghost behind him. Gone. 

Gone already. How? How long had he…

The gaggle of kids across the street, melting in boredom on the sides of the cement wall, have reformed themselves into jostling straight lines, raising their voices in what sounded like protest at their leader’s absence. Said leader, with the same eyebrow-raising tiger hat, stood in the middle of them, getting swarmed by grabbing fingers and shrieks of either boredom or flesh-consuming hunger. Whichever one it was, Teddy couldn’t… he didn’t… Hhhh. Too many people. Too many voices. Too many fingers. But. Light reflected off of the empty bottle, catching stray droplets and separating into distorted rays of sunshine. It’s disposable, it’s trash definitely, now that it’s empty, but. 

He didn’t want to. Throw it away. To move on. He didn’t want to. 

“Hey!” His voice doesn’t usually reach that loud, nor that insistent, but, as his feet race over, aching on the burning pavement, he manages to get there fast enough before he needs to hop from foot to foot. Most of the kids back away, unsure of who this stranger was with his tangled red hair and fluorescent sunburn. “I was just-” 

He doesn’t seem to be listening. “Whoa, dude, where’re your shoes? It’s hot! You’re gonna get blistered and stuff, you should-”

“-I was just trying to tell you that-”

“-Definitely go inside and get something before it gets really-”

“-I just-” 

Their two voices rise louder and louder, not really connecting anywhere but just mingling together into word soup, before Teddy turns his face down into his hands. God this isn’t working, why does no one listen to him, why, why, why can’t he just get everything out! Why!

“I just wanted to say thank you! That’s all! SO JUST SHUT UP AND LET ME SAY IT PLEASE!”

He clenches his eyes shut tight, as tense and flushed as his fists as he waits, presumably, to get a fist lodged right into his face or stomach or wherever this very large man felt it just to put it. But it doesn’t come. Teddy waits, head down, longer and longer, heart pounding. Forever, it seems like, endless. He’s gonna die. He’s gonna fucking die. He’s gonna get his ass kicked in front of a bunch of children and he’s gonna fucking die. 

 

Nothing. 

 

Slow… Slowly… Open them. Gently. Carefully. One eye, then the other. That’s it. 

The garish orange hat, and the man attached to it, kneels at his feet, slipping off his enormous white sneakers-- the type Brendol wore, Teddy notes absently, unsure what use that information holds for him-- and sliding those shoes over toward his feet. “Here, I’ve got socks on. You can wear these.” 

Without thinking, without considering how strange the offer was, his feet slide into the sneakers, grossed out by how sweaty they were within but also… they’re cooler than the ground. They’re insulation from the heat, and finally, he can stop for a minute. He’s not thirsty, not so hot, not hurting. It’s so easy, for him, to forget, to get lost in sensations, so much so that he doesn’t remember anything else. It’s easy to get lost. Or to run away, he realizes, all in this moment. It’s… going to be okay. Maybe. Possibly. Hopefully, okay. 

The stranger rises to his feet in silence, before laying a hand on Teddy’s shoulder in a friendly gesture he neither deserved nor could be denied, either. His eyes, surprisingly, aren’t so unfamiliar, not when you can look deep into them to see what they hold. Dark, maybe a little reluctant, but nothing so untouchable as his brain considered beforehand. 

“Thanks… for that. And earlier. And, and…”

He smiles with the side of his mouth, lip curled up into his cheek “S’okay. You gotta take care of yourself, though.” The overly-agreeable hand on his shoulder slides away, holding it out for a shake that he, eventually, takes. “Matt.”

“Teddy.” 

“You, uh… you come here often?”

That’s it. That’s… the question? He can’t help his snort, he really can’t, before his lungs start to burn with laughter. Those wet, ugly dry heaving laughs that he can’t keep back for a second, until he’s wheezing frantically for breath. God. 

“No, “ He manages finally, voice thick with amusement. “No, I… I don’t. Come here often, no.” 

Matt’s red, surprisingly, when Teddy can manage to wipe his eyes, around his ears. “I’m, uh… I’m happy you came.” 

“Me… me too.”


End file.
